Software

Instant messaging (IM) is not just a social networking tool for bored teenagers. A British study shows that while some abuse of IM is occuring in the workplace (no different than the telephone, the Web, or email), IM has some solid business benefits, including improved communications, faster decisionmaking, and better information gathering.

The article says that 62% of British businesses do not use the technology at all, suggesting that most firms lag well behind the curve in making good use of technology.

Apple's new Tiger operating system will debut this Friday, and details are beginning to leak out. One of the most talked about features is called Spotlight, a new search engine built into the operating system. Spotlight will index and search virtually your entire hard drive--emails, PDF files, all word processing files, and "knows" about the file formats of things like images, which can have keywords and subject descriptors attached to them, but could rarely be searched.

A Business Week story highlights the growing popularity of the Firefox browser. Business Week says the browser is easy to install and easy to use. Among Firefox's most popular features is tabbed browsing. If you have not used a tabbed browser, you are really missing out. Instead of having multiple browser windows open, you have a single browser window with a row of tabs along the top. Each tab represents an open Web page.

In yet another egregious example of an organization being hijacked by the IT folks, the FBI may have to scrap a brand new $170 million computer system because, get this, it doesn't work.

When these things happen, there is plenty of blame to go around. There are always at least three guilty parties.

If you hate waiting in line at the Post Office to mail packages, don't. The U.S. Postal Service has online label and postage services that are just terrific. Now that I have an account with my credit card information saved, it takes about a minute to print out a bar coded shipping label complete with postage. If you get it done early enough in the day, put a sticky note on your mailbox and the postman will come right to your door to pick up the packages. Or if you are running late (as I am today with Christmas gifts), you can walk right in the post office, drop them off, and walk out.

Google released a piece of software a few months ago that would let you use Google to search your own hard disk, with results displayed just like Google displays search results from the Web. Sounds good, right?

Aside from the obvious privacy issues (Google swears they won't do anything with the data except target ads to you better, but they can change that policy anytime they like), I'd never let a third party search my own hard drive.

Penn State, one of the country's largest universities, has recommended that faculty, staff, and students stop using Internet Explorer because of persistent security flaws, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

My experiences with Oracle date back to the early eighties, when the database ran only on DEC's VAX system, and the company was working with AT&T to port the system to Unix. At that time, Oracle's chief software developer lived in a cabin in the woods somewhere in the northwest, and phoned in his work to the Silicon Valley company.

My Irish boss, Frank, used to get Larry Ellison on the phone weekly and scream at him about the all the problems we were having with the beta Unix port of Oracle.

A Cnet article details a surprising study that shows Firefox users see four times FEWER ads than Internet Explorer users.

Firefox is the free Web browser that is increasingly popular with Windows users because it is faster and has fewer security problems than IE. It also apparently does a much better job of blocking pop-up ads, which may account for some of the differences between the two groups.

A story in USA Today details how easily a Windows machine connected to the Internet (e.g. via DSL or cable modem) can be hijacked. Macintosh and Linux machines were also tested, but it was found that the numerous security holes in Windows made it more difficult to keep the machine secure.

Numerous reports from various sources are all pointing the runaway success of FireFox, the Open Source Web browser for Windows and other platforms. It has doubled its marketshare in the past year, and the recent release of version 1.0 has caused a big spike in downloads of the free browser.

A London computer security firm has just completed an extensive, year-long study of hundreds of thousands of security breaches against computers running a variety of operating systems, and OS X was found to be the most secure. OS X is a Unix computing environment running the BSD variant.

Surprisingly, Linux was found to be the target of many security attacks, although the Windows platform also recorded very high numbers of breaches.

I wrote yesterday about Apple's excellent and free videoconferencing software. Last night, I saw a Microsoft ad touting the advantages of their LiveMeeting product. It's interesting to look at the two very different approaches to the same market space.

Google's popular Gmail has already required a security patch that allowed a third party to easily log in and gain full access to one's mail.

I'm amazed at people's willingness to hand over all their private and/or business correspondance to a third party that can do anything it likes with it. Yes, they have a privacy policy, but they also reserve the right to change the privacy policy without your permission.

As many had predicted (including me), the electronic voting systems are likely to be troublesome, if not downright threats to our country itself.

It is almost unbelievable, but some electronic voting systems in Florida failed within the first hours of use. So much for vendor claims of reliability.

I am at the Roanoke Airport, on the way to the Rural Telecommunications Congress Annual Conference in Spokane. I have a Delta flight to Cinncinati, then switch to Northwest for the rest of the trip.

It's hard to feel very sorry for USAir and the company's financial problems. Yesterday, I saw yet another example of IT stupidity. I got to Charlotte and wanted to catch an earlier flight. The Roanoke flight that was leaving was nearly full, so I had to stand and watch the poor gate agent laboriously hand key every boarding pass into the computer. Fifty boarding passes, each one requiring several keystrokes. And virtually every boarding pass had a bar code on it.

If you use Windows, here is some scary information for you. Wired reports on a study that shows an unprotected Windows computer becomes infected with some kind of malignant virus or malware just 20 minutes after being connected to a broadband connection (e.g. cable modem or DSL).

Wired wryly notes that that is not even enough time to download a typical set of patches from Microsoft.

Millions of people now have Paypal accounts, online access to bank accounts, and other online access to financial transactions, typically protected only by the passwords they pick themselves.

If you are still using your dog's name or some other simple four or five letter word for your password, you may want to read this short article on the various ways bad people are using to steal passwords.

I'm always amazed at how badly some Web sites perform. Here are two examples I found yesterday.

I visited the site of a national architecture/design firm that is well known. I could overlook the annoying Flash animation on the home page that made it virtually impossible to read anything (a product of the MTV generation, undoubtly, who believe that any image that remains on a screen for than ten seconds is "old fashioned"). But within two clicks, I found myself on a page that informed me that I was using an "antique" browser and that I needed to immediately upgrade to Explorer 6.0. Yes, the one that CERT, the national Internet security folks have said is a serious hazard that should not be used. It is supremely arrogant for a company to ridicule potential customers by telling them they have "antique" browsers (I was using the latest version of FireFox, which was released about three weeks ago--hardly "antique"). It costs almost nothing to design a Web site that works well on a variety of browsers. It is intellectually lazy not to do so, and from a business perspective, just plain foolish.

But wait--it gets better. This national firm also has a Web design division. When I clicked on that link, I was taken to the home page of one of these firms that buys up domain names and sits on them. Huh? You want me to hire you to do Web design but your own Web site link doesn't work? I'll pass on that.

We're moving a few blocks away next month, and I decided to see if I could DSL from Verizon. Verizon has finally adopted the strategy of most of the other phone companies, which is to price DSL at $30 to compete with the cable companies' Internet service, which tends to run $10-$15 more. I quickly got to a page that told me to enter my area code and phone number, and in a "few moments" it would tell me if I could get DSL service. I waited a "few moments," staring at a little blinking animation that was supposed to tell me something was happening. I gave up and went on to other work, but left the browser window open. About an hour later, I checked back....still blinking, still no indication of whether or not I could get DSL at the new house. Hmmm...think I'll stick with cable modem service a while longer.